CBS2 Exclusive: Brooklyn Family Recalls Frightening Encounter With Burglar

NEW YORK(CBSNewYork) -- Women have been awoken and threatened in the middle of the night by a suspected burglar – some while sleeping.

As CBS2's Weijia Jiang reported, the memory of a man breaking into her family's home was so traumatic for Jasmin Ceballos that it brought her to tears.

For Jasmin 8, the incident triggered her worst fears.

"(I thought) he was going to kill my mom," she told CBS2's Weijia Jiang.

At 4:30 a.m. on May 6, the attacker entered through the front door of the family's apartment building, police said.

It was one of four burglaries in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn in the past three weeks.

Surveillance footage from the NYPD shows a suspect running from one of the scenes. In each case the victims were women who were sound asleep.

When Jasmin's mother, Ava, woke up, the suspect grabbed her throat.

"I was scared. I thought he was going to kill me. I was screaming loud so someone could hear me, so if I died, my daughter could survive," Ava Ceballos said in Spanish.

Eventually the suspect ran off with $100.

In an incident on Sunday, a woman came home to find a man stuffing pillow cases with electronics and food, after breaking in through a roommate's bedroom window.

"I opened the door and there was a man in my refrigerator," she said.

"If I was there, the window is right above where my head would be when I'm asleep so it's pretty scary," her roommate added.

Police said each time the thief ran away without seriously injuring the victims.

Jasmin said she is still afraid "that he's going to come back, and no one is going to hear us when we knock on the walls."

Officers from the 79th Precinct have now arrested a Bronx man in connection with the Sunday incident -- the most recent of four burglaries in the area.

Jeffrey Robinson, 39, has been charged with burglary, criminal possession of stolen property, possession of burglar's tools, assault, and criminal mischief.

Police were investigating to determine if Robinson could be linked to the other three cases.